Friday night at Doyle Stadium brought warm weather, a great crowd, and the Fenwick Friars to face off against St. Rita in the Prep Bowl quarterfinals. St. Rita was coming off an impressive 31-6 victory against Leo the previous week while Fenwick was still trying to get over their heartbreaking loss to Boylan in the state playoffs. Fenwick held a 7 point lead with under 10 seconds left in that game when Boylan returned a 90 yard punt for a touchdown with no time left. The ensuing 2 point conversion for Boylan was good and Fenwick would

The Friars came out early and looked like they would atone for that loss when Robert Spillane scored on a 19-yard run with 2:05 to play in the first quarter putting Fenwick up 7-0. However, St. Rita would quickly take the game over. The Mustangs scored 21 unanswered points, highlighted by quarterback John Kelley’s two touchdown passes of 15 yards to Julian Crum and a three yard pass to Senior, Tom McCormick. The Mustangs would go into the half up 21-7 and never look back.

The story of the second half was the St. Rita defense, namely Lamar Dawson. Dawson, who had 4 interceptions going into the game, padded his stat column with three more raising his season total to 7 on the year.

“The first one I was just watching the quarterback,” Dawson said. “The second one I just read the quarterback and I was just watching what he was doing, but the last one was a little tougher. It was a little farther back and I had to watch to see where (Cavalieri) was going.”

While the offense looked solid all game, the Mustangs looked to their defense to make key stops and plays all game, something Head Coach Todd Kuska believes they did.

“I think our defense has played well at times and some of the times we’ve failed to get things done, but tonight we did a great job,” St. Rita coach Todd Kuska said. “Lamar had an excellent game and they put good pressure on the quarterback.”

St. Rita would go on to win the game 24-14 setting up the rematch of the year against Brother Rice. The two teams squared off earlier in the season in which Brother Rice won 23-21. The game will be played on Saturday November 17th at Brother Rice at 2:30pm. The winner will move on to the Prep Bowl Championship to play the winner of the public league.